The Balkan Trilogy (110 page)

Everyone concerned treated the production and delivery of the News-Letter as a supremely exacting operation. If a query arose, it was discussed in whispers.

Yakimov, packing the letters into his satchel, would also speak in whispers; and setting out on his delivery round, he went with strained and serious face.

The last letter run off, folded, placed in an envelope, addressed and delivered, everyone was exhausted, but the most exhausted was Yakimov who, safely back in his office, would collapse into his chair and seem, like the runner Phidipides, about to die from his efforts.

Altogether some four or five hundred envelopes were sent out, some to Greeks but most to English residents in and about Athens. Harriet had been surprised to realize how many British subjects remained, and how much ground Yakimov had to cover on his bicycle. Letters, tied up in batches, were marked not only for the city centre, but for Kifissia, Phychiko, Patissia, Kalamaki, Phaleron and Piraeus.

The first time she had seen them prepared for delivery, she tried to break down Miss Gladys’s hostility by saying: ‘I never knew poor Yaki worked so hard.’

‘Poor Yaki!’ Miss Gladys caught her breath in horror. ‘Are you referring to Prince Yakimov?’

Harriet did not improve matters by laughing. She might treat Yakimov as a joke, but he was no joke for the Twocurrys. Her casual manner towards a man of title marked her for them as one who had too high an opinion of herself. Several times in the office Miss Gladys often began remarks with ‘I never presume’ or ‘I know my station’, and she saw her station increased by the fact she worked with a lord and a prince.

The Twocurrys were not alone in respecting Yakimov’s title. Several among the remaining English were delighted to have a prince drink himself senseless at their parties.

Alan told Harriet that soon after Yakimov arrived he was
seen standing on the balcony of a flat where a party was in progress. Singing mournfully to himself, he displayed the organ, the secondary function of which is the relief of the bladder, and sent a crystal trajectory through the moonlight down on to the heads of people drinking coffee at an outdoor café below.

Alan told the story with tolerant affection. In Rumania, where there were too many princes, most of them poor, it would have been told with venom and indignation. His situation there had become such he would, had Guy not given him refuge, have died, as the beggars died, of starvation and cold. In those days he used to speak contemptuously of Greek cooking, yet it was here in Greece that he had regained himself and found friendship.

Harriet, who saw him often, could not imagine why she had ever disliked him. He had become not only a friend, but an old friend. They shared memories that gave them the ease of near relationship.

When Alan and Yakimov went to Zonar’s or Yannaki’s, they would take Harriet with them. ‘Do come, dear girl, we’d love to have you,’ Yakimov would say as though it were he and not Alan who dispensed hospitality.

Yakimov did not buy drinks for his companions. The habit perhaps had been lost during his days of penury, but once in a while, when the glasses were empty, he would become restless as though, given time and money enough, it might return. It never did. Alan would say: ‘How about another?’ and Yakimov would remain poised for a second, then ask in hearty relief: ‘Why not?’

Yakimov would contribute a joke, his own joke; but once conceived, it had to do long service. The joke of the moment, derived from his contact with the decoding office, was one that called for careful timing. He had to wait until a second order was given then, the waiter having come and gone, he would say with satisfaction: ‘Three corrupt groups asking for a repeat.’

When at last Alan said, ‘Need we repeat it again?’ Yakimov
murmured sadly, ‘’M growing old; losing m’
esprit
. Poor old Yaki,’ and the joke went on as before.

Alan and Yakimov would discuss
Maria Marten
and the gossip of the rehearsals, and Harriet learnt more from them than she ever learnt from Guy.

It was Yakimov who mentioned that Dubedat and Toby Lush had approached Guy and asked if they might take part in the revue. Guy had made no promises and later the two found the rehearsals were proceeding without them.

‘Bit of a jolt for them,’ said Yakimov. ‘Am told Dubedat was ruffled. Trifle put out, you know. Goes round telling people if it weren’t for him that show we did in Bucharest – what
was
it called, dear girl? – would have been a fair foozle. Says that only his performance saved the day. Told the Major that. Bit unfair to the rest of us, don’t you think? Or wouldn’t you say so?’ Yakimov gazed anxiously at Harriet, who, assuring him that in her opinion it was
his
performance that carried the production to the heights, said: ‘You were Pandarus to the life.’

Much gratified, Yakimov said: ‘Had to work very hard. Guy kept me at it.’ He reflected for some minutes then a look of pique crumpled his face. ‘But what came of it? Nothing. When it was all over, your Yak was forgotten.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘Yes, forgotten,’ Yakimov insisted bleakly. ‘Dear fellow, Guy. Best in the world. Salt of the earth, but a trifle careless. Doesn’t understand how a poor Yak feels.’

Harriet was startled by this criticism – she had imagined she was the only one who criticized Guy – and the more startled that it should come from Yakimov. Yakimov, picked up when hungry and homeless, had been lodged by them for seven months and she felt angry that he should dare to criticize Guy, and criticize him in front of Alan.

Yet, startled and angry as she was, she realized he had spoken out of a genuine sense of injury. Guy had made much of him, then, the play over, had abandoned him. Guy imagined he was all things to all men, but did he really know
anything about any man? Did he know anything about her? She doubted it. She, too, was beginning to accumulate a sense of injury.

Yakimov had suffered from coming too close to Guy. Guy was, she suspected, resentful of those near enough to hamper his freedom. It occurred to her that he might resent her. Why, for instance, had he not told her himself that Lush and Dubedat had asked for a part in the revue and been rejected? He may have forgotten to tell her, but more likely he had not chosen to tell her. He would not admit that he felt about them as she did. He would rather protect them against her judgement.

She felt his attitude betrayed the concept of mutual defence which existed in marriage.

But perhaps it existed only for her. It would be impossible to persuade Guy that he betrayed a concept that did not exist for him. He would condemn it as egoism. He might have his own ideas about marriage, but she doubted it. Having married her, he simply ceased to see her as another person. She had once accused him of considering her feelings less than those of anyone else with whom they came into contact. Surprised, he had said: ‘But you are myself. I don’t need to consider your feelings.’

In Bucharest, where he continued his classes for Jewish students in spite of Fascist demonstrations, he said: ‘They need me. They have no one else. I must give them moral support,’ yet he seemed unable to understand that, living as they did, she, too, needed ‘moral support’. As she met every crisis alone, it seemed to her she had been transported to a hostile world, then left to fend for herself.

Here, if she had nothing else, she had her work and the friendship of Alan and Yakimov. Alan, seeing her daily, had become more easy company. He would talk freely enough, though he had areas of constraint. One of these was Pinkrose and everything to do with Pinkrose.

When Harriet asked, ‘Does he object to my being in the office?’ Alan shrugged and would not reply. Pinkrose had imposed himself on the office. Useless though he was, he had
become Alan’s superior and must not be discussed. Still, he could be mentioned in relation to the Twocurrys.

Alan said: ‘Gladys appointed herself chief toady to Pinkrose the minute she set eyes on him. I suspect she’s a bit infatuated with him.’

Harriet wanted to know how the Twocurrys ever achieved their position in the Information Office. Alan told her:

‘We started the office on a shoestring. I had to take any help I could get. Later we got a grant and I could have had a real secretary: one of the delightful English-speaking Greek girls. Instead I kept on old Gladys and Mabel. They needed the money. I just hadn’t the heart to chuck them out; and now I’ve got Gladys spying on everything I do and at the slightest upset rushing off to complain to Pinkrose. The moral of this story is: never let your heart get the better of your sense.’

‘You could get rid of her now.’

‘Oh, Pinkrose would never let her go. He described her the other day as “invaluable”.’

‘I suppose they aren’t paid much?’

‘Not much, no. They scarcely get a whole salary between them; but then, they scarcely do a whole job. Mabel, in my opinion, is more nuisance than she’s worth.’

The letters sent in to be typed by Miss Mabel were written very carefully in letters an inch high. Her speech, which Harriet heard seldom and always found distressing, was understood only by Miss Gladys. She never moved unaided from her chair. If she had to visit the cloakroom, she put up a panic-stricken babble until Miss Gladys led her away. When the time came for their departure, Miss Gladys would first put on her own coat and hat then grip her sister by the upper arm and get her out of the chair. While Miss Mabel mumbled and moaned, demanded and protested, Miss Gladys fitted her into her outdoor clothing. Both wore hats of sunburnt straw. Miss Gladys’s coat was bottle green and Miss Mabel’s coat was of a plum colour reduced in its exposed places to shades of caustic pink. Miss Mabel, who was delicate, was not allowed out without a tippet of ginger-brown fur.

When they left the office, where did they go? How did they live? How did women like the Twocurrys come to be in Athens at all? Alan said they had been the daughters of an artist, a romantic widower, who had saved up to bring himself and his little girls to Greece. They had found two rooms in the Plaka and the father, while alive, made a living by drawing Athenian scenes which he sold to tourists. That had been way back in the ’80s and the sisters still lived on in the Plaka rooms. Before the war Miss Gladys had worked at the Archaeological School piecing together broken pots. She had taken Miss Mabel with her every day and, said Alan, ‘the Head, not knowing what on earth to do with her, shut Mabel up with a typewriter. Weeks later, mysterious sounds were heard through the door … thump-thump-thump.
She had taught herself to type
. When the war started, the Archaeological School closed down and the Twocurrys were thrown upon the world. I seized them as they fell. And now,’ Alan gave his painful grin, ‘you know their whole history.’

‘So the office is all their life.’

‘I doubt whether they have any other.’

Harriet doubted whether she herself had any other. But it was a life of sorts. Her position in the office, though minor, was recognized. She was even invited to a party by the Greek Minister of Information. Delighted by this courtesy, she wanted to share it and hurried to ask Alan if she might take Guy with her. Alan telephoned the Ministry and a new card was delivered addressed to Kyrios and Kyria Pringle, but Guy, when he saw it, said he could not accept. His revue was to be staged at Tatoi during the first week in February and rehearsals were now so intensive, be had no time for parties. In the end, it did not matter. Metaxas, whom the war had changed from a dictator to a hero, died at the end of January from diabetes, heart failure and overwork. The party had to be cancelled.

20

The revue, like the war, went on. Death was incidental to the times and the needs of the fighting men were deemed to be the major consideration. During the last week of rehearsals Guy disappeared from Harnet’s view and the only daylight glimpse she had of him was at the funeral of an English pilot which they attended in the English church. He then had a look of frenzied incorporeity that came of not sleeping or eating or bating effort for three days at a time. In the few minutes that they spent together after the funeral ceremony, she protested that Guy was over-doing it. The revue, after all, was, as he had said, a joke. The audience of airmen would not be overcritical. But Guy could not do less than his utmost. He was just off to Tatoi for the dress rehearsal and would probably not manage to get home that night. Where would he sleep? Well, if he slept at all, he would probably doss down on the floor at the house of one of the Greek students who lived near the airfield. He had not returned to his adolescence; he had, she decided, never left it.

All evening she imagined him, exhorting the chorus and standing behind the stage, singing and shaking his hands in the air, possessed by a will to electrify the show and sweep it to the heights. When she went to bed in the silence of their empty suburb, she could imagine the day when Guy would be too busy ever to come home at all. They might meet occasionally for an instant or two, but he would disappear from her life. He would have no part in it. He would simply have no time for anything that was important to her.

Next evening, staff cars took the players and their friends to Tatoi,
where the main hangar had been rigged out as a theatre. The wind, sweeping over the dark reaches of the airfield, was wet with sleet. The women were not dressed against the dank and icy chill inside the hangar and the officer-in-charge, noticing that the visitors were shivering, sent to the store and fitted them all out with fur-lined flying jackets.

The curtain went up and the boys and girls, feverish from their all-night effort, burst into uproarious song:

‘There’s fun and frolic, jokes and sketches, too.
You’ll find them all together in the R.A.F. revue.’

Just as Harriet had imagined, Guy’s hands could be seen waving wildly behind the two lines of the chorus.

The concert-party jokes were applauded with good-natured resignation. In spite of all the work, the first half of the show was neither better nor worse than most shows of its kind. It was
Maria Marten
that turned the entertainment into a triumph.